Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1887-05-04
THE LOGICAL END OF POOLING.

THE LOGICAL END OF POOLING.
Missouri Republican: sit is no easy
thing to tell when the modern practice
of pooling special interests for the pur-
pose Of extorting hige prices will end.
1t is growing daily and even hourly.
Though not bad i'm all Its features, aims
or results, it nevertheless long since be-
came an evil and will surely grow more
serious. The object of it is to ext0rt
high prices. 1t is therefore a form of
robbery. 1t is using unnatural viO-
lence TO compel a consumer to pay
more for a desired article than he
would have to pay if there were no
pooling, and competition were free.
The producers call it Limiting produc-
ton" but IL is something else; it is ex-
tortion. And it seems be beyond the
reach of law. A pool is a combination
OF capital, machinery, intelligence and
experience-and these make it a form
liable power. 1t is violent attempt
to oppose and battle the entire
spirit of the age. Tie members of the
combination are necessarily striving to
increase the productive powers Of their
machinery at tie very time they are
striving to limit production. They
seek TO augment production while they
attempt TO restrict it.
The methods of the system amaze
us. Nearly every group OF manufac-
tnrers whose contiguity of location
permits il, form combination which
has two objects-firSt, to keep wages
down, and, second, 10 keep prices up;
and every person who encounters such
a combination finds it inexorabIe and
pittilcss. One of its favorite practices
is that Of decreeing that one-half or
twO-thirdS only If the establishments
in the country shall produce, while the
other third shall remain idle. The idle
ones are paid for being idle, the COM
penSa.ion being measured by their ca
pacity Of production. This singular
arrangement makes inactivity profit
able. They actually earn an income
for doing nothing. There are hun
Grcds, probably thousands of produc-
ing establishments in the land, built at
large cost for the purpose of making
certain articles of general use, that are
at this moment as silent ana useless
To the community as if they did not ex-
lSt. The millions of money invested
in them might as well have been
thrown into the sea. They employ 10
labor. They consume no fuel nor
other material. Their idleness causes
them To limit production and consump-
ton at the same time, for they consume
neither labor nor materials, and their
suspension, like the sudden halt of the
engine of Il freight train, transmits
jolt and halt all along the line of con-
nected Industries.
The pooling to limit production is
growing in favor and increasing in
prevalence with the increase in ma
cGinery and economical processes, SO
that every new invention that multi
plies the capacity to produce and cheap
Ell is made the preteXt for sllencing ad-
ditiOnal establishments and maintain
ing high prices. Invention is thus
made 10 rebuke and condemn itself.
But as invention cannot be limited and
must 60 on; in other words. as the ca
pacity to produce must go on increas-
ing, are we TO understand that n time
Will come in the not far off future when a
single shoe factory in Lynn, equipped
with improved machinery an! operated
by women and children, will make all
the shoes the population needs; when a
single rail mill in Pennsylvania, SINH
larly equipped and with a compare
lively small force of hands, will supply
the entire demand for steel rails; when
single tannery will make all the
leather, a single stove moulding found
ry Will make all the stoves, a single
carpet factory will make all the carpets;
and single mill all the flour? But
when that time arrives what will be-
come OF the hundreds of thousands of
shoemakers, foundrymen, puddlers.
mOulders, tanners, weavers. and mill
laborers turned out of work? They
Will have no money to buy shoes,
stoves. carpets and -four with-and so
the end Will be that the arrangement,
in limiting production and maintain
ing prices, will have reduced cOnsump-
ton also and defeated its own object.
Combinations TO keep up prices, to be
successful, must be limited. Ii they
werc general they would defeat them
selves. y pool is organized against
somebody. IL implies victim to be
robbed and the proceeds divided among
the members of the pool. But suppose
The practice shall become general-and
matters are tending that way-suppose
the coal mine owners combine against
the iron masters. and the iron masters
against the stovemakers, the wooi-rais-
els and importers against the carpet
manufacturers. the tanners and leather
importers against the shoe factories.
the wheat raisers against the millers.
the farmers against the commission
merchants. and the working classes
against all who employ labor-each
league having for its purpose to dehar
competition and absolutely control the
supply of what ii has to sell and die
tate the price-what would society be
but scene of destructive antagonisms.
without an interest in common, and
each pDmhatauf infant m r,hl,;r 70 ~